Search results for "History of Mathematic"
showing 9 items of 29 documents
Old mathematical challenges: Precedents to the millennium problems
2018
The millennium problems set out by the Clay Mathematics Institute became a stimulus for mathematical research. The aim of this article is to highlight some previous challenges that were also a stimulus to finding proof for some interesting results. With this pretext, we present three moments in the history of mathematics that were important for the development of new lines of research. We briefly analyse the Tartaglia challenge, which brought about the discovery of a formula for third degree equations; Johan Bernoulli?s problem of the curve of fastest descent, which originated the calculus of variations; and the incidence of the problems posed by David Hilbert in 1900, focusing on the first…
Personal Reflections on Dirk Jan Struik By Joseph W. Dauben
2018
Dirk Jan Struik, who taught for many years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and died on 21 October 2000 at the age of 106, was a distinguished mathematician and influential teacher. He was also widely known as a leading Marxist scholar and social activist. His early work on vector and tensor analysis, undertaken together with Jan Arnoldus Schouten, helped impart new mathematical techniques needed to master Einstein’s general theory of relativity. This collaboration lasted for over 20 years, but by the end of the 1930s, Struik came to realize that the heyday of the Ricci calculus had passed. After the Second World War, having now entered his 50s, he gave up mathematical research …
Algebraic Geometry between Tradition and Future
2023
An incredible season for algebraic geometry flourished in Italy between 1860, when Luigi Cremona was assigned the chair of Geometria Superiore in Bologna, and 1959, when Francesco Severi published the last volume of the treatise on algebraic systems over a surface and an algebraic variety. This century-long season has had a prominent influence on the evolution of complex algebraic geometry - both at the national and international levels - and still inspires modern research in the area. "Algebraic geometry in Italy between tradition and future" is a collection of contributions aiming at presenting some of these powerful ideas and their connection to contemporary and, if possible, future deve…
Introducing History of Mathematics Education Through Its Actors: Peter Treutlein’s Intuitive Geometry
2018
This paper deals with the questions why and how to introduce into teacher education the history of teaching practices and educational reforms. In particular, we are interested in the developments of curricular school geometry during the 19th century and the reforms at the beginning of the last century in Germany. The life and work of Peter Treutlein—a contemporary of Felix Klein—and a conceptual reformist of geometry instruction, schoolbook author, committed teacher and school principal with educational experience of many years opens to us many opportunities to link present teaching practices in Geometry to its traditions, some of which we will discuss.
On Gauss and Gaussian Legends: A Quiz
2018
For the last few years, students in my history of mathematics course have been required to do a bit of research on the web. Each of them chooses from a list of specially chosen questions designed to make them ponder whether the information they find on standard internet sites is solidly grounded and clearly sourced, or whether subsequent research (pursued in such unlikely places as the local university library) might lead a person to doubt what one reads online. The idea here is not to push for a definitive answer; in many cases, this would be a hopeless undertaking anyway. Instead, I ask students merely to report on what they found and how they went about tracking down the information cite…
Cross-linking maths: Using keynotes to structure a curriculum for future teachers
2018
International audience; The paper gives an outline of a concept for university maths teacher education, that is based on three keynotes, which are central scientific notions, history and language. Amongst other benefits, the keynotes serve as cross-links between the different courses the students go through in their studies.
Les ouvrages de mathématiques dans l'histoire
2013
Les frontières qui séparent les ouvrages de mathématiques, qu'ils soient destinés à la recherche, l'enseignement ou la culture, sont poreuses. L'auteur d'un ouvrage destiné à des chercheurs doit se faire comprendre, surtout s'il propose des notions inédites. L'auteur d'un ouvrage d'enseignement voit parfois des problèmes d'enseignement devenir des problèmes mathématiques. Un ouvrage destiné à la culture mathématique accumule les difficultés : diffuser des idées nouvelles à un public non averti. Le propos de ces études sur les ouvrages de mathématiques est de parcourir ces frontières pour questionner aussi bien l'existence des ouvrages, leur production et leur matérialité, que les visées de …
Pulling Harriot Out of Newton’s Shadow: How the Norwegian Outsider Johannes Lohne Came to Contribute to Mainstream History of Mathematics
2016
The focus of this paper is on the peculiarities of Lohne ’s “outsider approach” to the historiography of mathematics and physics. The main thesis is that the circumstances of Lohne ’s outsider position both narrowed down and sharpened the focus of his research, but that he succeeded because he joined the then rising tide of archival based and content oriented internalist research in the history of physics and mathematics and because he was supported by scholars such as D.T. Whiteside and J.E. Hofmann , whose connections to the international community were better than his own. The main conclusions are based on Lohne ’s Nachlass in Oslo and on some other archival sources. In addition Lohne ’s…
I poligoni stellati: origini storiche ed implicazioni didattiche
2019
The genesis of mathematical concepts in the evolutionary line of human thought in the long story and the genesis in individual optics possess evident analogies. Starting from this assumption, we describe an activity presented to 15-year-old students; the aim was to consolidate fundamental concepts of Euclidean geometry related to regular polygons. The experimentation has used a didactic approach based on the historical evolution of the formal definition of regular star polygon through the centuries. The activity and the results obtained in terms of internalization of the concepts in the students are showed.